


we are nowhere, and it's now

by Ship_theboybands



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec Lightwood-centric, Angst, Gen, M/M, but alec is a strong human being, but resolved angst, malec is not the main focus of this fic, the clave are the worst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:02:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6287452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ship_theboybands/pseuds/Ship_theboybands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And he cries for the world that is so ungrateful, that wouldn't let him have one good thing, one drop of love for himself, for all the blood he’d shed for it. I want it back, he thinks, I want it all back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are nowhere, and it's now

**Author's Note:**

> set roughly after city of bones at some point?? idk it doesn't work w book cannon plot really.
> 
> title from a bright eyes song bc they are alec lightwoods favourite band

_There’s an ugly puddle of porridge on the kitchen floor right next to the table. There are little pieces of red ceramic in and around it, and a pair of socked toes dipping in at the edge._

 

_ Alec doesn’t seem to notice or care for the way his socks are being ruined, or the perfectly nice breakfast being lost forever, or the mess on the floor, or the death of his favourite bowl. Alec is gripping the letter so hard he can feel the sweat from his thumb seeping into the paper, feel it crumple minutely in his grasp, see the skin underneath his nails turn white. If not for the rushing in his ears he’d be hearing the coffee machine buzzing, and beneath that the tick of the clock, and beneath that the distant sound of Jace shouting something, of Izzy laughing. _

 

_If it wasn’t for the wet blurring of his eyes he’d still be staring at the words printed in clinical black ink, plain and clear font. He closes his eyes, and finds the text imprinted on the back of his eye lids or maybe the front of his subconscious, and in each new stomach dropping second of free falling he feels another wave of nausea roll from the tip of his head to his socked feet where they rest in the lukewarm remnants of his breakfast_

 

“Hey, fringe, can you get that customer? Or does the fringe actually detach you from the rest of the world? Like, is there an alternate universe in there that none of us will ever-”

“Shut up, Eric,” Alec grumbles under his breath before he pushes his hair off his forehead and offers Mrs Stephenson a bright smile. Mrs Stephenson is probably Alec’s favourite regular; she’s in her eighties, always looks glamorous and orders her coffee black, no sugar.

“The usual, Mrs Stephenson?” Alec asks, noting the way her purple lipstick matches the velvet coat she’s wearing.

“Yes please, doll. How are you doing?” She asks, rooting through her giant designer handbag for her purse.

“Pretty good, actually. I like the snow,” He says idly, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater and preparing her drink.

“Hm, pretty from the window, not so pretty when it’s flattening my hair out,” She shrugs, winking at him. Alec hands over her drink and wishes her a good morning, watches her stride out into the street to join the masses of people, all bundled up like eskimos as they fight their way through to get to work. Alec feels a rush of gratitude to be indoors, looking out at them from the warmth of the counter.

“God, I hope I’m that cool when I’m old,” Eric muses.

“You’ll never be cool, Eric, but it’s nice to have ambitions,” Alec says deadpan, and Eric swats him with the cloth he’d been using to wipe down the counter. Alec is horrified, which Eric finds hilarious until Alec has him in a headlock and is threatening to dunk his head in the dirty dishwater. Another customer comes in, and they break apart to serve him, trying not to laugh as he eyes them up suspiciously. 

“I hate you,” Alec says, fighting his grin as Eric pulls faces at the man now leaving the shop.

“No you don’t, you love me!” Eric singsongs, and Alec pretends to gag.

 

_ Maryse finds him like this a few moments later, face scrunched up in pain, pale as bone, and trembling like the space between two negative magnets being forced together. He looks like a cardboard cut out, and she knows almost immediately what the letter he’s holding says.  _

 

_ “Alec, sweetheart…” She starts, and she never calls him sweetheart, which seems to shake the shock out of him, and he opens his eyes like someone coming up out of water. It reminds her of when she’d taught him to swim. She sees him now as she’d seen him then, bony and fragile and fiercely determined, his wet black hair dripping from his head like ink. It feels like yesterday, and she takes all the love and hope and pride she’s always kept for him and uses it to push herself forward, and take the letter from his hands.  _

 

_ She only needs to skim over it, to catch the phrases, ‘sexual misconduct’, and ‘call to trial,’ for her suspicions to be confirmed. She’d feared it for so long, but knowing it was coming made it no easier, lessened none the sensation of her heart being ripped out of place and dropped heavy in her stomach. _

 

_ “Oh, baby,” She feels the words torn out of her, and pulls him to her chest, but he stays frozen and rigid in her arms like ice, like the wooden dolls she’d had as a child, “baby, my baby, oh sweetheart,” She sobs, and Alec doesn’t say anything at all. _

 

The day moves on like this not unpleasantly. Alec secretly loves the Christmas season. They do special drinks and desserts, meaning it always smells like ginger syrup and cinnamon biscuits. Alec also secretly loves when his shifts match Eric’s and they spend the day enjoying the weird easy banter Alec’s become so accustomed to. They serve red nosed christmas shoppers and make small talk with regulars and clean out the oven. When their shifts are over they each grab a Vanilla Hot Chocolate and head in opposite directions down eighth street. 

 

“You’re gonna come jam later, right?” Eric calls down the street, “Kirk misses you!”

 

“Kirk can shove it,” Alec shoots back, but he’s grinning so Eric knows he’ll be there.

 

The snow’s calmed down a little, less violent blizzard and more gentle, storybook snowflakes floating down like tiny parachutes. Alec enjoys the simple satisfaction of putting his boots through the deep snow settled on the ground, of walking through the streets of his city when it’s not so crowded and he’s got nowhere to be particularly. He’s got gloves and a thick jacket and his drink is keeping him warm enough that he’s in no rush. He observes the contrast of the whiteness to the red buildings, the yellow hat of the woman across the road, the bright blue sky. He finds himself humming a little bit under his breath, a tune he doesn’t recognise at first but when he does it stops him in his tracks. 

>  
> 
> ‘Black for hunting through the night
> 
>  
> 
> For death and mourning the color’s white…’

  
  


_ The hearing is a quiet and quick affair. Alec holds the mortal sword, feels that odd excruciating weight of it pull at him, as the inquisitor asks him intrusive questions and he gives the only answers he can. The truth spills out of him like porridge onto kitchen tiles, ugly and solid. Alec vomits, and then the inquisitors findings are presented to the clave, and then they vote. _

 

_ “He’s just a boy,” Robert says, and Alec’s never heard his father’s voice shake in such a way, “He doesn’t know what he wants.” _

 

_ But Alec is eighteen, and whilst he’s never felt more like a child than in that moment, feeling every comment from every member of the council slice through him like an arrow, he is seen by the clave as an adult. There’s still some muted numbness, some shock induced detachment to Alec’s experience as they raise their hands like school children, and Alec sees the tide of their faces, the discomfort and shame and confusion breaking through their blank expressions. _

 

Alec’s place isn’t anything particularly special, but it’s nice enough. The building’s only a twenty minute walk from Java Joe and the rent’s reasonable. Alec doesn’t mind the concrete gray walls, or the broken lift. He runs into his neighbour, Jerry, who is a scientologist and gives Alec a five minute lecture on the way that the government are slowly poisoning him through his cereal. Alec shakes his head and shrugs at him like ‘that pesky government, what are we gonna do with them?’ Before finally heading into his apartment. 

Alec’s not got a lot of stuff, but he likes what he has. There’s a little blue rug on the floor when he first walks in, and there’s a pair of sneakers by the door which he puts his boots with once he’s kicked them off. He throws his coat on the little table that used to belong to Matt’s Mom and flops down onto the mattress in the corner of the room. He could only afford a studio apartment if he didn’t want a roommate when he’d first set out looking for somewhere to live, and he’d been totally terrified at the time of sharing space with anyone for too long. He thinks he wouldn’t mind now, but he’s happy enough where he is. There’s an ensuite bathroom and a little kitchen area in the corner, and the old guitar Eric lets him borrow which might as well be his now resting against one wall. He’ll pay Eric back for it one day. It’s the only thing in the entire apartment that Alec hasn’t payed for himself.

 

_ He wonders if he should have run, as they take him to a room which reminds Alec a lot of a mundane hospital. Rune Removal feels like having his skin peeled off by a hot knife, and leaves his flesh raw and vulnerable. He feels the loss of each one, feels weaker and slower and wearier. He’s exhausted by the time there’s only one left, too exhausted to kick and scream and fight his way out of the room. He pushes at the bed, but he has no strength at all, falls back against the pillows like his strings have been cut. _

 

_ “Please,” He begs, his voice barely there, “not that one, please, please.” _

 

_ The nephilim woman who’d been performing the procedure looks at him with such sincere sorrow he knows immediately that she’s going to do it. _

 

_ Alec howls with all that is left of him as they take away his Parabatai rune, his most deep and profound bond scraped away like a temporary tattoo. He howls until the world falls away from him. _

 

Alec pulls the laptop further onto his knees and plays the video again. The woman explaining Pythagoras's Theory has an incredibly soothing voice, and before he knows it the laptop’s slipping from his grip as his eyes drag themselves closed. He curses when he realises he’s missed the last three minutes of explanation and is going to have to start again. He sighs and pulls his phone out of his pocket, dialling Lola’s number.

“Yo,” She answers, sounding like her mouth’s full.

“Hey, do you get any of this Pythagoras shit?” Alec asks, setting the laptop aside and leaning against the wall.

“Kinda, yeah, you not getting it?” She asks.

“Just tired, you know,” He grumbles, and she makes a sympathetic noise.

“Yeah, I get it. My shift just ended, so we could meet before class starts and I can try to help you before Daniels shows up?” She suggests, because she’s wonderful. Daniels is the graying college professor who guides test prep sessions. 

“You’re the best,” Alec informs her, because she is.

“I know,” She sighs, the slight lilt of a laugh to her voice, along with the same tiredness in the voices of seemingly every adult student attending the GED preparation programme at The City College of New York. Lola is twenty one, a couple of years older than Alec. She has blue hair and dark skin and is the legal guardian of her ten year old brother. She works in retail, and tells Alec terrible, hilarious stories about the customers she meets. Alec likes her because she wants to know about his life now, not his life then, so he treats her with the same courtesy. 

 

Alec listens to music on the way to college. He really loves music, and wonders fleetingly how and why he lived without it. He taps his fingers to every beat of the Bright Eyes song in perfect time, and mouths the words a little, staring at his shoes. He knows he’s supposed to crave grander moments, but he secretly thinks that nothing else really gives him quite as much satisfaction as this- as listening to the perfect song that he knows so well on the tube where no one will bother him if he has headphones in and his head down.

 

_ Jace and Izzy are both crying so terribly. They’re making awful childish choking sounds, and they both keep hugging him, and Alec feels sick. He feels sick and weak and helpless and raw and their grips are so off puttingly strong. Alec has had strength and stamina and pain tolerance runes drawn into his skin for as long as he can remember, and without those traits he’d grown so used to he feels as though a strong gust of wind might send him toppling over. It’s like his bones are made of glass or lego or paper mache. _

_ “But where will he live? They can’t just send him away to live on the streets!” Izzy howls, and Maryse squeezes her hand. _

_ “We are still his family, Izzy, but he’s legally an adult. We’re going to help him out with money to get set up in an apartment somewhere, until he finds a job-” _

_ “Doing what? He’s a shadowhunter. That’s his job, it’s all he knows!” Jace bites out, eyes shining. Alec wonders what his Parabatai rune looks like now- if it’s totally wiped like Alec’s or if it’s faded, like white ash, how he’s seen them look on Shadowhunters whose Parabatti is dead. _

_ “I’m banished,” Alec says, his voice sounding frail and quiet to his own ears, “I’m not aloud to live here anymore. That’s all there is to it.” _

_ “They can’t do this, they just can’t,” Jace whines, like a petulant child. It’s such an illogical thing to say. This is totally within the Clave’s power, is something they’ve done in the past, is something they’re already in the process of doing to Alec. _

 

_ His siblings continue to complain, and Alec feels their words sweep over him like low flying birds. He finds himself entirely dissociated from the situation, his eyes drifting to his father’s stony expression, the defeated set of his shoulders. Alec wonders if he’d always suspected, and thus always known this was going to happen, and if that was why he’d always loved Isabelle more. _

 

Lola gives him a much more vibrant explanation of Pythagoras's theory and Alec gives her half of his bagel, and then Lola bitches about her day of work in an increasingly exaggerated manner as Alec becomes increasingly amused. The classroom begins to fill up with single mothers and recovering alcoholics, starving artists and beauty school drop outs, and finally Professor Daniels, miserable and droning as he pulls up a powerpoint. Everyone looks exhausted, and determined, and Alec is a little bit in love with all of them. 

 

_ He finally, truly cries that evening. When everyone else has gone to bed, he pulls a sweatshirt over his aching arms and makes his way to a loft in the middle of the city. The cold makes his skin ache, makes his fatigue more pronounced, his joints stiffer. He’s never minded the nighttime so much, never longed so much for the day. _

 

_ Magnus opens the door with wide eyes and a surprised smile that drops from his face like blood from split knuckles, and tells Alec he looks unwell. He asks him what happened and then his gaze falls to Alec’s hand, the red looking skin where his strength rune should be, and he says “Oh. Oh, Alec, where-” _

 

_ And Alec finds his voice, somewhere deep down in his throat or behind his heart, “They took it away. They took all of my runes away.” His voice is steady. _

_ “Alec-” _

_ “Because they found out. About what we did- you and me,” He swallows thickly, and Magnus interrupts again in the same strained voice like a metronome. _

_ “Alec, I’m sorry-” _

_ “It doesn’t matter that you’re sorry,” Alec’s voice trembles now, with fear and anger and grief; grief for the life he’s always known and who he’d been planning on becoming, for his bow and arrow and his sense of self and all the hard work he’d done to protect this world that he doesn’t want to be a part of any more. “It doesn’t matter that I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter that I wish I’d never met you, Magnus Bane, they took my runes away and they banished me,” He shoots the words at him like arrows and they fly true, each one pushing Magnus slightly backwards. _

_ “Alec-” _

_ “Just shut up! I hate you, I fucking hate you!” He pushes all the pain into his words, arms clenched where he stands in Magnus’s doorway. And every atom between them can feel the cruelty of his words, the cruelty of the world and the cruelty of the law, and the cruelty of ignorance. “Never come near me again,” He says in a voice as cold as steel, and then he sinks to his knees so abruptly. And he cries for the world that is so ungrateful, that wouldn’t let him have one good thing, one drop of love for himself, for all the blood he’d shed for it. I want it back, he thinks, I want it all back. And Magnus stands above him in all his golden, sparkling brilliance, at the end of an infinite timeline, and looks for all the world like a lost child. _

 

By the time class has finished, and Alec’s dropped by Eric’s to play some music and borrow an album, and then grabbed a bean burrito from his favourite mexican food van and sat eating it on a park bench as a lady dressed entirely in bright yellow told him about her failed marriage, it’s pretty late. Alec opens his door with a tired sigh, but not an unhappy one, and gets himself ready for bed. He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror as he brushes his teeth, and decides his fringe is worth Eric’s jokes. He likes how it contrasts to the blue of his eyes, how it’s feathery lightness looks next to the more rigid lines of the rest of his face; his square jaw, the cut of his cheekbones. He lists off everything he has to do tomorrow: morning class, lunch with Lola, afternoon shift, Eric’s thing in the evening maybe, buy milk.

 

He slips into bed and lays awake for a while until he hears the sound of the door opening, and the dim orange light from the hallway illuminates a strip of the room from his bed to the door where a familiar silhouette stands, and relief rockets through him like coming up for air, like the call from a doctor to tell you the tests came back clean, like the gruff looking man on the street walking right by you when you’d been sure he was looking at you funny. 

 

The door closes again, and Alec can see him only by the light of the moon through his window; hears both of their shallow breaths and the ambient sounds of the city outside fill up the atmosphere. The man takes off his coat and boots and then drops onto the mattress next to Alec, smelling like outside and sweat and, beneath that, sandlewood. Alec wraps around him like a limpet just as Magnus does the same, and then they’re tangled so perfectly, so desperately; Alec’s face in Magnus’s neck and their limbs a tied up pair of shoelaces.

“Three days,” Alec says, his voice unreadable.   
“I know,” Magnus whispers apologetically, regretfully.

“My family?” Alec asks.

“All safe.”

“Clary? And Simon? Maia, Jordan, Jocelyn, Luke-”

“Everyone’s okay. The faeries are under control, It’s all calmed down.”

Alec feels that rush of relief again.

“Oh,” He says, and then “Good.” 


End file.
